When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi » (Abridged)

With an eye for bringing the mysteries of history to light and a knack for reportage that won him a Pulitzer for his work for The Washington Post, David Maraniss pens compelling works of nonfiction that give readers insights into larger-than-life figures, from Bill Clinton to Vince Lombardi, while illuminating major events in American history.

When Pride Still Mattered is the quintessential story of the American family: how Vince Lombardi, the son of an immigrant Italian butcher, rose to the top, and how his character and will to prevail transformed him, his wife, his children, his players, his sport, and ultimately the entire country.

It is also a vibrant football story, abundant with accounts of Lombardi's thrilling life in that world, from his playing days with the Seven Blocks of Granite at Fordham in the 1930s to the glory of coaching the Green Bay Packers in the 1960s. It is also a study of national myths, tracing what Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David Maraniss calls the fallacy of the innocent past, and an absorbing account of the mythmakers from Grantland Rice to Howard Cosell who shaped Lombardi's image.

By the time he died of cancer in 1970, after one season in Washington during which he transformed the Redskins into winners, Lombardi had become a mythic character who transcended sport, and...

Esquire

...Maraniss attempts to answer, at last, the eternal question: Was Lombardi half the man that Jerry Stiller made him out to be in those Nike ads?